


Time (Drags On)

by drugdog



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Angst, Drunk Sex, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Pining, Post-Canon, References to Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-21
Updated: 2015-02-21
Packaged: 2018-03-14 09:00:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3404888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drugdog/pseuds/drugdog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He knows, when Joe's leaning heavy on his crutches and standing over him, eyes on him like he's something brand new, that it's about to happen. Always does. His hands sweat again. Always do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time (Drags On)

**Author's Note:**

> For the wonderful Gene, who I indirectly wrote this for and left sitting in my drafts for four months.

Babe's only ever worked to get laid. He knows the game, knows how to play it. He's got to be charming, not too flirtatious. It starts with pickup lines, goes on to flowers and dinners with terrifying fathers. And then he gets it- or sometimes, it doesn't get him anything but a face red from a slap, and he wonders if it wasn't worth the effort.

Now it comes to him and all he has to do is get drunk. Maybe it's because he's switched to johns since he came home.

Maybe it's because he's switched to Joe Toye.

Joe comes down almost every weekend from Reading. Babe's disappointed when he doesn't see him at their usual bar, more disappointed than when he doesn't see Bill. After all, he's been talking nonstop about what he's up to with Frannie.

Babe sits across from Joe and buys the first round on those weekends. Joe fills him in on the boring drive, on the crick in his back, on nearly slipping in a rest stop bathroom when he tried to piss.

"Whiskey tastes different down there. Shittier," he says, or, "Bill talks my ear off on the phone so much I just gotta keep in touch," leaning back in his chair under the low light of the bar as if he needs an excuse. Babe wouldn't but it anyhow. No one would drive two hours for better booze, and if it was him, he'd have unplugged his phone by now to stop Bill from calling.

The 'living alone and legless is a struggle' goes unsaid, but Babe still sees it. Joe's vacant most of the time, staring at things that aren't there and pressing the heel of his hand hard into his leg.

He orders another round and another after that to let Joe think he's fooled him. He ought to get the Reading booze out of his mouth while he can.

In the times that Bill's not there, Joe asks after him in the pauses between throwing back shots.

"Fuckin' Frannie, I bet. Ain't been married too long and already tryin' for kids," he says, and sighs out smoke when he's lit a cigarette.

Joe sometimes looks put off after he says that, and Babe thinks back to what Joe and Bill might've had during the war. If Joe was just like he is with Babe.

Babe asks after the girl Joe will never have.

"Ain't found her yet," Joe says anyway, just to entertain him. "Factory work ain't the ideal for finding the love of your fuckin' life."

Babe's not ridiculous. He won't match Joe drink for drink. He might be Irish, but his blood's weaker than Joe's. He lags behind, takes a shot for every two of Joe's, and ends up more wasted either way.

Not that he would admit it.

"Let’s get you home," Joe says after Babe's six or seven shots in, and that's funny, Joe saying it like he's Babe's wife, come to collect him before he pisses his paycheck away. Joe props his head up in one hand most of the time after saying that, twitching a half-smoked Lucky Strike between his teeth. He surveys him closely and reaches for his crutches with his free hand.

They spill onto the dark streets from the steps of the bar, glancing at each other in the fading yellow lights of the place. Babe stumbles, sometimes, on cracks in the sidewalk.

He can't help that the hard line of Joe's jaw, that his dark lashes framing darker eyes, are distracting.

He always hopes Joe thinks he's wasted enough to stumble and stare, even though Joe stares back at him, eyes half-shadowed, with an intensity that has his hands sweating.

It works, most of the time. Joe hooks his right arm around Babe's shoulders. He pulls him close and helps him walk.

Babe needs an excuse for staring. He sure as shit doesn't need one for walking. And dragging might be a better word for it.

Joe, for a guy with one leg, is good at dragging. He presses Babe to his side, hops, and scrapes them along with his crutch. They trip up and laugh about it, and it's all too soon that they're at Babe's apartment. He fumbles with his keys until Joe takes them from him, saying, "God, Babe, you're gonna drop your fuckin' keys into the pits of hell next time you drop 'em."

He'd like to lean on Joe longer. He smells good, and he cusses at him for his weight and his drunkenness and some other things he can't hear- Joe's voice is quiet as it is low- in a way that feels endearing.

Still, Babe doesn't cling to his jacket. He doesn't press his nose into the warm skin of Joe's neck like he wants to. It's harder to make excuses for those sorts of things.

Babe needs them for everything he does with Joe. He needs justification, needs to know what he's done can be dismissed.

He squints into the darkness of his apartment when he gets in. There's the coffee table covered in empty beer bottles and cigarette packs in the living room, and its accompanying, shitty couch. That couch is where he's heading. He grabs Joe's shirt and pulls him with, feeling walls like a blind man to keep on his feet.

Joe sure knows his ways around the streets, but Babe's best at home. Sometimes. He's still afraid of the dark, but not in the way that he was when he was a kid, fearing murderers hiding at every turn.

He fears Julian coming to him, Miller, all the boys who died, with blood still bubbling from their wounds, coming for him, telling him it's his fault.

"I wouldn't be a virgin," he hears Julian rasp in a horrible whisper, reaching for him with those Bastogne-pale hands.

Here, he's the murderer, because he's the one who could've kept them from dying.

When he's alone, he rushes around and shouts at the slightest disturbance. But that's what Joe's for.

Joe turns on the light when they get there. When Babe's done cussing from the brightness, he never fails to say, "Jesus, you must've murdered spring cleaning." It gets less amusing every time. Babe had a feeling that's why he does it.

It's not all that messy. He just forgets to do his laundry. The carpet probably has a few bread crumbs imbedded into it.

"Shut the fuck up," Babe says, and he lets Joe shove him onto the couch. He knows, when Joe's leaning heavy on his crutches and standing over him, eyes on him like he's something brand new, that it's about to happen. Always does. His hands sweat again. Always do.

They sweat because Joe sets his crutches on the other cushion of the ugly old couch. He falls into his lap without grace, takes the sides of his face in his hands, and kisses him until he's burning for air and dizzy for more.

"I like broads, you know," Babe always says when he breaks away from that first kiss, gasping with his hand hovering over the back of Joe's neck.

And Joe smiles. "You like me," he says, and kisses him again. It's solid logic as far as Babe's concerned, and that might be from the intensity of his want.

Babe curls his fingers in Joe's hair when they kiss so he can pull and itch. Joe gives low, surprised noises from the back of his throat and kisses him slow and smooth. His mouth tastes like whiskey, the good, South Philly kind. Babe bites and drags Joe's lower lip with his teeth.

He doesn't play when he fucks, but Joe saying "Babe," in a voice strained and heavy, he takes his time.

Joe gets tired of teasing, and that's around when he digs his thumbs into Babe's hips like he means to break them. He pulls away with a half-smile and licks his mouth, says, "Just fuck me, Heffron, or I'll do it myself. Got that?"

So Babe wrestles Joe down on the couch, settles between his thighs, and gives him what he wants. He might knock Joe's crutches to the floor, and Joe might smack him in the head, but Babe's learned to distract him from that.

Joe doesn't lay and take it like old darling Doris. He wraps his leg over Babe's waist, presses his body flush on his, and rolls his hips hard. Babe kisses him, sloppier because of the tight heat of friction and he's breaking away to gasp and swear.

Babe sticks a hand down between them and unbuttons their trousers most nights. He licks a hand and wraps it around the both of them, rocks down slow and easy.

One of Joe's hands comes up to his back, then, and the other slides down to grip over Babe's until the pressure's maddening. Joe's fingers dig into his shoulder and he's always glad to be wearing a shirt, or he'd have small red crescents on him for a week.

"Come on," Joe might say if he's feeling impatient, "come on, Babe." Babe can't ignore him anymore.

The nickname's never sounded so good coming from anyone but Doc, and it's a different kind of good with Joe. This good sends shivers up his spine until his coming with a jerk and a strangled sound, holding onto Joe with his eyes squeezed shut. He can get away with pressing his nose into Joe's neck when he's drunk enough. Joe might hold the back of his head with surprising gentleness if he's drunk enough, too.

Joe's breath goes off when he's about to get off, long breaths in and several short pants out. He presses hard against him and digs his heel into the small of his back when he knows he's done. Babe kisses him a last time. There's none of that after. They're not queer, anyway, the dozens of times they've done this are drunken mistakes.

He scratches his nails down Joe's side and he's got him coming with a noise that sounds like it got punched out of him.

After, Babe gets off of Joe, wipes his hands on his slacks, and stands to clean up in the bathroom. Joe's his guest, but he doesn't care. It's always like that.

Babe won't linger or smile or ask him how good it was. He knows Joe won't smile and say something back.

Joe stays until Babe comes back. He's sprawled on the couch when Babe looks down at him, chin tilted up to hold his gaze like a challenge. It's only ever a moment. Joe gets his crutches and goes into the hall. Babe hears him lock the bathroom door and grumble about how he really ought to pack another fucking set of clothes one of these days, for Chrissake.

Babe doesn't say good night, even though it'd make him sleep better.

He knows it'd be best if Joe slept with him so he could listen to the sound of his even breathing instead of the tap of a tree on his window that could be Julian's rotting hands. Maybe he could sleep without the light on.

Either way, Joe won't talk to him until the next morning to tell him he's going back to Reading after he knocking on his door. Babe passes the bathroom for his room and flops into bed face first.

He sleeps well and doesn't dream, and he hopes Joe does, too. Joe's stayed with Bill a few times, and when Joe doesn't come down and Babe goes to the bar with Bill, he complains about waking at night because Joe's groaning with nightmares. Babe wants to get him good enough that he doesn't have nightmares, and he knows Bill doesn't think the same.

"Why don't you come live up here?" he asks on the mornings when he's awake, and that's almost all of them- he's started waking up every day at five or six, half expecting a knock on the door.

Joe smacks a crutch against the door. Always does. There's even a dent in it from Joe hitting the same place every time. "'Cause I need to stop drinking," he says, or, "'cause it's too goddamn loud here, Heffron," and Babe knows it's not that. Joe won't move to South Philly because he doesn't want to think about what they could be, what they are.

And to be fair, he doesn't want to think about it either.

Babe rolls over. Joe walks away. He's never hesitated at the door. Babe thinks it's his crutches. Joe can't wait and think about what he wants without Babe knowing from the lack of thumping in the hardwood hall. He doesn't have the luxury of thought anymore.

Babe's learned, since the first time on the couch with Joe, to sleep again before he can think about what he wants and needs. Time drags on, after all, and he can think about it later when the memory of Joe's hands on his hips has faded into bruises.


End file.
